Scarce Copy Of "The Blind Pugilist" Sees Light of Day

by Stephen J. Gertz

"Every boy has a hobby, and my hobby was fighting," so says Philadelphia boxer, cigar store owner, and sometime dog trainer Ellwood McCloskey (1872-1927), known as "the Old War Horse of the Prize Ring," in The Blind Pugilist, a promotional memoir rich with vivid anecdotes of his days in the ring, his training regimen (maintained despite  going blind and retirement in 1901), and his professional record. It is an extremely rare piece of boxiana, not found in R.A. Hartley's History and Bibliography of Boxing Books.

Garrett Scott, a rare bookseller located in Ann Arbor, Michigan with a sharp, fully-functional eye for heteromorphic literature, i.e. books deviating from the norm, scores a knockout for finding this forgotten and extremely rare little book. From my perspective, it's a main event, eye-opening fisticuffs with handcuffs on the eyes.

"I never 'jobbed' or quit; nor was I ever knocked out. I also defy anyone to refute this latter statement. I simply quit my profession because of losing my eyesight, as at present I am totally blind. In addition, let me say that I did not have to quit because I was a 'dead one' or a 'has been.'"

According to BoxRec, Ellwood "The Old War Horse" McCloskey's professional boxing record, 1895-1901, was 81 fights, with 26 wins, 32 losses, 20 draws, and 3 no-contests. This is far from a sterling record. McCloskey, a Lightweight, was, apparently, indeed so. And, despite his no-knockouts claim, he took the horizontal express and landed on Dreamstreet, boxing's boulevard for the out of this world, three times.

He fought Kentucky Rosebud, Billy Whistler, and Jimmy Simister three times each. He was in the ring with Crocky Boyle, Yock Henninger, Marty McCue, Eddie Lenny, Patsy McDermott,  Young Starr, etc.

Between Rounds by Thomas Eakins, 1898-99.
McCloskey is seen in corner, overlooking Bill Smith.

In addition to his career in the ring, McCloskey played a small role in American art, appearing in Philadelphia artist and fight fan Thomas Eakins'  Between Rounds (1898-99). McCloskey is seen working as a corner man overlooking local featherweight Billy Smith in 1898. McCloskey corralled other boxers to pose for Eakins, who had set up a boxing ring in his studio. Ellwood was a firm wrangler who took no nonsense from recruits: "Hey, you son of a bitch, haven't you got a date to pose for Mr. Eakins? Come on now, or I'll punch your goddamn head off" (Goodrich, Lloyd. Thomas Eakins His Life and Work, Vol. II, p. 145).

Pittsburgh Press December 15, 1912.

In 1912, Ellwood McCloskey, now totally blind, returned to boxing for an ad hoc bout, decking C.J. Dunn, who, while patronizing McCloskey's cigar store, insulted Mrs. McCloskey. Dunn was hospitalized in the aftermath of the aspersion.

In a sign of the times, it was Dunn who was charged with a crime, not McCloskey, who, despite having been a professional boxer and not directly threatened by Dunn, was deemed the innocent party. Insults to a man's womenfolk were not countenanced by contemporary standards.

Lawrence Journal-World May 31, 1923

Pete Herman.

Herman Gulotta (1896-1973), fighting as Pete Herman aka Kid Herman, fought his last sanctioned bout in April of 1922; he had been going blind for a while and, after treatment returned sight to one eye in 1923, apparently returned to the ring. He ultimately went totally blind. 

Sam Langford.

 Ellwood McCloskey and Pete Herman were not the only blind pugilists. Sam Langford, "The Boston Terror," is considered to be "the greatest fighter to never win a world boxing championship....He was the most avoided fighter in the illustrious history of boxing. Despite often being outweighed by 20 to 50 pounds in many of his fights, he scored more knockouts than George Foreman and Mike Tyson combined. Fighting from lightweight to heavyweight Sam Langford took on all the best fighters of the first two decades of 20th century. He spent the last years of his fighting career virtually blind where the bulk of his losses occurred, although he still won a number of fights impressively by knockout. He was an amazing fighter. His record was 214-46-44, 16 no decision, 3 no contest with 138 KOs" (Monty Cox, Cox's Corner Profiles).

The grim novelty spectacle of a blind man in the boxing ring has not passed.

Ramathan Bashir (r), the blind pugilist of Naguru, Uganda,
here sparring with a blindfolded opponent.

"Ugandans will for the first time witness a boxing contest for the blind at a major contest on Boxing Day. The rare amateur fight will feature Uganda's Ramathan Bashir and Tanzania's Simon Peter Makalebera at Stillight Beach, Mukono...

"Bashir, 29, a former striker with the defunct Sambaya FC of Naguru turned to boxing after losing his sight seven years ago.

"The East Coast Boxing Club blind pugilist has been regularly featuring in exhibition fights against blind-folded opponents during charity concerts at the International School of Uganda in Lubowa. The local amateur boxing body UABF has already given green light for the contest.

"'This man (Bashir) is a true boxer, we have no problem. Provided he is in good shape, the fight should go on,' observed the local amateur boxing body's secretary Simon Barigo" (Blind News, December 16, 2009).

His trainer is presumed to be the Anne Sullivan of boxing, the miracle worker if ever there was one when boxers are blind, and deaf to reality.

And if you find another copy of The Blind Pugilist, another miracle.

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McCLOSKEY, Ellwood. The Blind Pugilist. N.p. [Philadelphia]: N.p. [by the author?], n.d. [late 1920s]. Third and hitherto unrecorded edition. Sixteenmo. 32 pp. Photo-illustrations. Pictorial wrappers.

"This book written in 1915. No Revisions or Additions made since, with exception of back cover." 

With an advertisement from McCloskey on the inside rear wrapper thanking his wife and urging all who pity him to patronize the cigar store she operates for the family. He alludes to his mother having been dead some ten years, placing this sometime later than 1925. 

The outer rear wrapper records that, "These pictures were taken February 1st, 1916," and further notes  "The Blind Pugilist and his little pupil give 'Boxing Exhibitions' throughout the country." 

OCLC notes one copy (Chicago History Museum) under title, Ellwood McCloskey the blind pugilist and his pupil James McCarty: Starting an Exhibition of Boxing (1916). Only two copies of the second edition, under the title  Ellwood Stanislaus McCloskey, issued in 1917, are located, at Harvard Medical School and Notre Dame.  

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Book images courtesy of Garrett Scott, Bookseller, with our thanks.

Image of Pete Herman courtesy of BoxRec, with our thanks.

Image of Ramathan Bashir courtesy of Demotix, with our thanks.
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The Day Boxing's Jack Johnson Put Dada Surrealism on Dreamstreet

surreal by Stephen J. Gertz

Note Johnson in tuxedo.

On April 23, 1916, Jack Johnson, the former Heavyweight boxing champion of the world in exile in Europe after fleeing conviction for violating the White-Slave Traffic Act (aka the Mann Act), went mano a mano with modern art.

His nominal opponent was Arthur Cravan née Fabian Lloyd, an Englishman born and educated in Switzerland, who claimed to be the nephew of Oscar Wilde, a professional boxer, singer, art critic, poet - you name it. Living in Paris, he was a performance artist before the genre existed, the subject and theme of his art being himself. Creating a public spectacle was the reason he got out of bed each morning, and once on his feet was a walking happening.

From 1911-1915 Cravan published Maintenant, a literary review that lasted for only five issues but had enormous influence upon the young artists and intellectuals who had come together in Paris and were on the cusp of changing the world.

Maintenant no. 3, October-November 1915.

Cravan brazenly caused sensation wherever he went, whatever he did. In an article in Maintenant about the arts salon of 1912 he explicitly and graphically asserted that a portrait of artist Marie Laurencin suggested to him that she needed a good screwing, an opinion that her lover, poet and literateur Guillaume Apollonaire, took issue with. He challenged Cravan to a duel.

Absurdity, the ridiculous, the eccentric, the striking, the outrageous, and the shocking  were Cravan's bread and butter. His identity was whatever he decided it would be; long before Madonna made self-invention and re-invention standard operating procedure, Cravan practiced it with a vengeance. It is no wonder, then, that Cravan became the darling of Dadaists Marcel Duchamps, Andre Breton, and Francis Picabia.

In 1916, he was desperate to get to the United States (dodging conscription into the French army was nearly a full-time occupation), had moved to Barcelona and fallen in with its colony of French avant-garde artists in exile, and needed money. Whose notion it was to stage a match with Jack Johnson remains unclear but Cravan's fingerprints are all over the patently wacko and divinely nonsensical idea.

Arthur Cravan by Jean-Paul-Louis L'Espoir.

And so, "In early 1916, a frenzied group of fight promoters gathered in Barcelona to organize what promised to be a 'sensational encounter' between former world heavyweight champion Jack Johnson (the famous black fighter who was living in Europe, a fugitive from his native land because of charges of having violated the Mann Act) and Arthur Cravan, an outspoken, notoriously eccentric Englishman, who claimed not only to be a professional fighter, but also the nephew of Oscar Wilde. Posters were hung throughout the city to publicize the event. In the controversial match, which took place at the Plaza de Toros Monumental on Sunday afternoon, April 23, we can safely surmise that Cravan fought true to form, that is, leading more with his mouth than with his fists. After six rounds of what must have amounted to little more than a skillful demonstration of shadow boxing -  staged more for the benefit of a rolling camera than the disappointed audience - Johnson finally dropped Cravan with an upper-right/left-cross combination. Knockout or not, the audience smelled farce, and because of the guaranteed fifty-thousand-peseta purse, the next day the daily press proclaimed the fight 'The Great Swindle.'

"For Johnson, it was just one more relatively uneventful 'ring contest,' as he called it, arranged for the benefit of his pocketbook. For Cravan, it was the main event in his tragically short life; two and one-half years later, at the age of thirty-one, he would disappear off the coast of Mexico, leaving behind only scant traces of a fascinating and adventurous life, one that stretched from the outback of Australia to the inner circle of vanguard artists and poets on both sides of the Atlantic. Far more significant than the footnote he left in pugilistic histories was the undying legacy of his outrageous behavior, which played a unique role within the development of an artistic and literary avant-garde. Arthur Cravan was, as Gabrielle Buffet-Picabia [Francis Picabia's wife] later asserted, 'a man who personified within himself, and without premeditation, all the elements of surprise to be wished for by a demonstration that was not yet called 'Dada.'
   
"Another release announced that Cravan temporarily abandoned his post as Professor of Real Club Marítimo boxing in preparation for the big fight. He trained publicly at the Bricall Gymnasium with boxers Hoche, Pomés and Jacks. To the press, he is a 'great athlete of the white race.' In order to continue to warm the spirits, it was announced that a great night of boxing with five bouts will be held April 12: Arthur Craven and Jack Johnson will be the arbiters of the last two fights" (Naumann, Francis. New York Dada 1915-23, p.162).

Jack Johnson, 1915.

Reality check: Though he claimed to be a light-heavyweight champion (of something, somewhere) Cravan, according to Boxrec, had absolutely no competitive experience prior to the fight. Indeed, his official record notes  that he fought only three bouts: With Johnson (knocked out); against Frank Hoche (a draw, June 26, 1916); and against Jim Smith ("The Black Diamond" with only this fight to his credit) in Mexico City, September 15, 1918 (knocked out). With a record of no wins, two losses via knock-out, and a draw his only threat as a boxer was to his own safety.

In January 1917, Cravan departed for New York. His shipmate was Leon Trotsky. Upon arrival in the city he was welcomed by Duchamps (who had preceded him), and the collector, critic, and poet Walter Arensberg.

Hollywood has yet to produce a biopic about the fascinating character who was Arthur Cravan; I smell  a ripe indie flick. Johnny Depp on steroids?

The poster for the pre-fight Great Evening of Boxing with Johnson and Cravan as referees (above) with its appeal to collectors of boxing material, Black-Americana, surrealist art and literature alike, is exceptionally scarce and highly desirable. The event it documents is one of the most famous and electrifying episodes in Dada history. Surrealism didn't get much more surreal than these two giant, flamboyant characters - one a phenomenal athlete and the proudest black man on Earth, the other a human artwork in constant progress - going at each other,  two of the most outrageous and out-sized personalities of their time in slam-bang-boing surreal battle-royal theater of the absurd that rocks, Do Wah Dada-Dada Dum Dada-Do.

A fine copy of the poster has just come into the marketplace after a long dry spell. The odds of seeing another copy in similar condition are not much better than Cravan's against Johnson, which is to say, fat chance.



Above, the only known footage of Arthur Cravan "boxing," in Spain 1916, here playing Ring-Around-the-Rosie with an anonymous Mighty Mouse, to all appearances the only living creature Cravan had a chance against. This is, quite possibly (why else would it have been filmed?), Cravan "training" for the fight with Johnson, a demonstration of surreal Dada absurdity exceeded only by the fight itself.
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[JOHNSON, Jack. CRAVAN, Arthur]. Poster advertising boxing matches at Iris-Park, Barcelona, on 12 April 1916, promoting the forthcoming match between Arthur Cravan and Jack Johnson. Barcelona: (Societat Editorial Manresana), 1916.

Printed in red and black on wove stock. 3 halftone photographic illus., including a central half-length portrait of Jack Johnson. 431 x 209 mm. (c. 17 x 1/4 inches).

Provenance: Eduardo Arroyo, the Spanish artist, born 1937, whose 1991 portrait drawings of Cravan after the Jack Johnson match were published in the Strasbourg Arthur Cravan catalogue.
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Poster image courtesy of Ars Libri Ltd, currently offering this prize, with our thanks. Image of Maintenant courtesy of University of Iowa Digital Library. Lespoir portrait of Cravan courtesy Wikicommons.
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Hemingway Drinks Snake Wine, Gets Punched Out, And Other News From “Ernesto”

An unpublished letter by Ernest Hemingway recently came to my attention. It's a feast, moveable or otherwise, a highly personal letter that reveals more, I think, than Hemingway intended.

Dated June 9, 1943 and postmarked from Cuba, it is addressed to his boxing trainer and coach and close friend, George Brown, "a very sinister Irishman who owned a gym on 55th Street" (Patrick Hemingway) in Manhattan.

"Dear George:

How's everything?"

But before George Brown has a chance to write back with an answer, Hemingway takes off on a colorful tour of recent events in the Hemingway household and environs.

"Marty [his wife, journalist Martha Gellhorn] has two articles written and only four to go now. She's flown up to Lashio in Burma and back and we had a swell time on the flight across the Pacific. Going up now with the Chinese army for about a month and then out over the Burma Road. Am learning plenty and doing plenty of studying."

Papa discusses a recent cocktail that's strictly chef Anthony Bourdain territory, and seems to get a macho charge from the experience:

"You would go nuts in this place just walking around and seeing things. The other day I had a drink of wine that had real snakes in it. About eight of them coiled up in the jar. By God, would like to have seen the Colonel [Hemingway's buddy and hunting guide, Taylor Williams] face that one. They were snakes too. They had another wine that had dead roosters and cuckoos and all sorts of birds in it but after the snake wine I thought to hell with a chickenshit wine like that..."

I dunno, if drinking snake wine tickles Hemingway's testicles but dead rooster and cuckoo  wine isn't ballsy enough, I feel fairly confident that Bourdain would eat Hemingway under the table in gustatory test of courage. mano a mano, boca a boca. Hemingway believed he could stand toe to toe with any man; he was fiercely competitive. And yes, he could stand toe to toe with any man. Unfortunately,  with anyone other than a writer, not for very long.  I suspect Hemingway would take one look at one of Bourdain's plates of nasty bits - fricasseed scorpion, stir-fried Venus Fly Trap, the usual cornucopia of gag-inducing gourmet treats - and chicken-out but instead of gracefully conceding would instead make a scene.

Moving along, we learn that Cuba, apparently, was a magnet for a particular population of interest to Ernest.

"There are about 100,000 more or less beautiful Chinese whoors [sic] and not even Zoomo [?] could save the Colonel here."

Diet has become a major issue for Hemingway, now forty-five and thickening around the middle.

"Have been going out on the road [jogging] but get fat just the same. The food is so good and am hungry all the time. Drink milk for breakfast and have been drinking those vodkas and tomato juices the rest of the time. We will have to work like hell to get the fat off when we get home. Have about two and a half inches of fat across the bottom of my lower belly. Hard fat. You'll have to beat it off with a hammer. Weigh 223 stripped. Otherwise in o.k. shape."

Forget the hammer. All he had to do was lay off the Bloody Marys as standard, post-breakfast liquid refreshment during the day; the weight would have fallen right off.

Hemingway warms to a subject close to his heart yet so far from his abilities, boxing. As I have written previously, he was an awful boxer with a grossly over-inflated sense of his skill level, at best a rank amateur. He considered himself of semi-pro ability. Remember, he's forty-five years old at the time he wrote this letter.

"Have only boxed twice. Guy didn't know much but was 190 and only 26. Cut my lips with a good left jab when I came crowding in my new imitation of your old pal Harry but when I got in I kept on punching and it worked out just like you said. In the 2d round I kept left handing him and then when I quit and let him come to me I worked my left way out wide and set and hooked him with it and he sat down. Then we got friendly after that and I didn't do nothing wrong except backhand him a couple of times (My mistake. How could it have happened. I wouldn't know). But the second time we boxed the twirp cut my mouth again with the first punch and I went around for about a week with crusts on my kisser. But I punched him silly. I didn't make him sit down anymore because of us being such friends by then but I could have. He brought the gloves and they were little ones and hard as bricks. That was what made my mouth cut. The second time we were boxing outdoors on a cement floor in the garden behind the hotel. I was afraid to try to dump him because of the cement. To hear me tell it I must have been terrific."

I strongly suspect that if anybody else told it,  he wouldn't have been so terrific. Let's parse that 'graph:

He immediately gets cut by what must have been a very stiff jab. Hemingway doesn't like getting cut; when he and novelist Morley Callaghan sparred in Paris during the 20s, Hemingway spat blood in Callaghan's face after Callaghan bloodied his mouth but good. Hemingway's sense of his masculinity was pretty fragile; Callaghan had humiliated him in front of F. Scott Fitzgerald.

Hemingway easily looses control; he gets mad and typically begins to try to bull-charge his way in. That's how the mouths of blind, unschooled and undisciplined amateurs get bloodied. "I worked my left way out wide and set and hooked him with it." Amateur Hour. Work your left "way out wide" and say hello to a straight, inside right that greets your chin first. Only a tyro, an idiot or no-nothing would extend such an invitation.

 When things get tough, he fights dirty. "I didn't do nothing wrong except backhand him a couple of times (My mistake. How could it have happened. I wouldn't know)." Yeah, right. But he gets lucky and puts the kid on his fanny. Forty-five year old man exults over his apparent "win" over a twenty-six year old.

When I was young, dumb, and made of rubber, I toiled in the amateurs for a few years during my early twenties. Once, I sparred with a forty-three year old guy. I figured, gramps better have medical insurance.

Gramps made me look silly. He knew what I was going to do before I did it, I'd throw a punch and he'd be in another state by the time it would have landed. He'd take a half-step one way and tie me in knots the other way.

But though he was a former pro and could have easily hospitalized me, he didn't. I recall that I actually landed a single, solid shot. What did gramps do? He nodded in appreciation. Later on, he shook me up real good. What did he then do? Nothing. He backed off; he had nothing to prove by taking advantage of my relative inexperience.

Hemingway had to prove to the kid and himself that he was boss.

Next time they spar, the kid, now derided as a "twirp," once again tattoos Hem's phiz and spills his blood. This time, Hemingway can't sit the kid down despite "punching him silly." Excuse? They were now friends. Baloney. Friendship never stopped Ernest Hemingway from screwing with his friends. Reality: Hemingway wore the same "hard as bricks" gloves that the kid wore and bloodied him with (it couldn't possibly have been the power behind them. It was the magic gloves!). If Hemingway had indeed "punched him silly" with the "cement gloves" (they were probably regulation 8 oz. gloves used by pros with little actual padding), the kid would have been thoroughly beaten up.

Note that in his entire narrative only one person's blood is being spilled yet Hemingway gives himself the decision.

Does it sound to you like Ernie "the Oak Park Pretender" Hemingway is writing in Brooklynese? Hemingway is jumping through hoops to bond with and impress his trainer. But George Brown was no fool; he surely knew the reality:

"When [ George Brown] boxed with my father he would always warn him once that he was crowding too close and if the warning was not heeded, then knock him on his ass with the deftness of a striking cobra" (Patrick Hemingway, op cit).

The reality was that anyone who had even the slightest idea of what they were doing in the ring could take Hemingway, who was notorious for foolishly trying to actually fight trained boxers. It was the reason why Jack Dempsey avoided him in Paris - he knew Hemingway would try to get cute and Dempsey would have to seriously hurt him to keep him away. Hemingway was a danger to himself in the ring and no one else.

Having told all, Hemingway closes the letter with:

"I'll tell you about everything when we get back.

"Ernesto"

Poor George Brown probably never did get a chance to tell Hemingway, "How's everything?" Ernesto was too preoccupied with his own wonderfulness.

George Brown remained with Ernest Hemingway for the rest of the novelist's life as trainer, coach,  friend, and factotum. Brown reinforced and flattered Hemingway's sense of himself. But if Hemingway got cute and crowded him, he'd knock him on his ass. George kept it real without being a threat. Hemingway so wanted some of George to rub off on him, boxer by association.

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Letter courtesy of James Cummins.

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Bronte Versus Bronte Verses Kayo'd by Apathy

 

First ediiton, first printing, first issue (1846).

This is the story of a loser that couldn’t be saved, a palooka in green cloth boards that went down for a very long count, three limbs on the canvas, the other hanging onto the ropes for dear life. Though other sanctioning bodies may disagree, it holds the WBA crown for Worst-Selling Book of All Time.

Charlotte Brontë’s first published book was a flop; only two copies - two copies! - were sold in its first year of publication. The publisher couldn’t give the book away.

The book was Poems (1846), a collection by Charlotte, Emily, and Anne Brontë, the sisters writing under the male pseudonyms Currer, Ellis, and Acton Bell so that their work would be taken seriously. "We had the vague impression that authoresses are liable to be looked on with prejudice" (as cited in the Preface to the 1910 edition of Emily's Wuthering Heights). Charlotte (Currer) contributed nineteen poems, Emily (Ellis) and Anne (Acton) twenty-one each.

Charlotte Brontë, a colored drawing, 1873.

The publisher couldn’t give them away but Charlotte Brontë could, distributing copies to Tennyson and other contemporary authors. Not that it did much good. Only one critic paid much attention to it, and he only had good things to say about the poems written by Emily (“Ellis”), which possessed “a fine quaint spirit” (Sydney Dobell, The Athenaeum, July 4, 1846), hardly a critical ovation.

Emily Brontë.

One thousand copies of Poems were printed by the publisher, Aylott and Jones in London, May 1846 but with approximately 960 sets of unused sheets all printed up with no profitable place to go, they were put into storage.

Anne Brontë.

Not so by the way, Charlotte Brontë paid for the cost of the book’s paper and printing, £31.10s.

“In the space of a year our publisher has disposed of but two copies, and by what painful efforts he succeeded in getting rid of these two, himself only knows” (Charlotte Brontë to Thomas De Quincey).

The sales total was so depressing that it’s a wonder Brontë didn’t escape with De Quincey into opium.

And then a little book titled Jane Eyre “edited by” Currer Bell came along in 1847. Charlotte “Currer Bell” Brontë was no longer bookshop poison. Its publisher, Smith, Elder and Co., hoping to capitalize on Jane’s Eyre’s success, bought the 960 or so remaining sheets and bindings of Poems from Aylott and Jones. Many of the old bindings were restamped and new title pages (cancels) for the Smith imprint were added yet these inserted title pages retained the 1846 original date of publication. Beyond these cosmetics, there were no textual changes.

First edition, first printing, second issue (1848).

And so, there are two issues of the first edition, first printing, the Aylott and Jones, and Smith, Elder & Co.; the former obviously the book’s first appearance.

Smith and Elder’s roll of the dice with Poems came up snake-eyes. It took fourteen years for the initial print run of 1000 to sell out. That’s an average of sixty-nine people a year buying copies. A book that sells steadily over time is considered to be an evergreen title; it stays green, like money, no matter what the season. Poems, however, falls into a different class, the everlame, books that pathetically limp along, year after year, gasping for breath and refusing to die.

The second issue of Poems had many binding variants over subsequent years. In The Bronte Sisters: A Bibliographical Catalogue, Walter E. Smith believes that the light green binding with fancy harp "represents, I believe, more truly than any other the initial Smith, Elder publication effort and isolates it from some vestiges of the bibliographical confusion that resulted from the purchase of unsold quires and binding cases from Aylott and Jones" (Smith I, note 1).

First edition, first printing, second issue, first state binding.

In 1848, Lea & Blanchard of Philadelphia, gulled by Jane Eyre’s success, published an American edition of Poems. It, too, took a ten-count.

Yet Emily Brontë’s poetry has stood the test of time; she is considered to be one of the great English lyric poets. Emily Dickinson was a fan, was inspired by her, and thought so highly of Emily Brontë's poetry that she chose "No coward soul is mine" to be read at her funeral:

No coward soul is mine
No trembler in the world's storm-troubled sphere
I see Heaven's glories shine
And Faith shines equal arming me from Fear

0 God within my breast 

Almighty ever-present Deity 

Life, that in me hast rest 

As I Undying Life, have power in Thee!

Vain are the thousand creeds 

That move men's hearts, unutterably vain, 

Worthless as withered weeds 

Or idlest froth amid the boundless main

To waken doubt in one 

Holding so fast by thy infinity 

So surely anchored on 

The steadfast rock of Immortality

With wide-embracing love 

Thy spirit animates eternal years 

Pervades and broods above, 

Changes, sustains, dissolves, creates and rears

Though Earth and moon were gone 

And suns and universes ceased to be 

And thou wert left alone 

Every Existence would exist in thee

There is not room for Death 

Nor atom that his might could render void 

Since thou art Being and Breath 

And what thou art may never be destroyed.

Poems may have died but not that one. That’s the steel core of a serenely fearless, strong and independent-minded woman expressing itself.

Emily Brontë's poetry rose and left her sisters' on the canvas.
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[BRONTË, Charlotte, Emily and Anne]. BELL, Currier, Ellis, and Acton. Poems. London: Aylott and Jones, 1846. First edition, first printing, first issue. Octavo. iv, 165, [1, colophon], [1, advertisement], [1, blank] pp.

[BRONTË, Charlotte, Emily and Anne]. BELL, Currier, Ellis, and Acton. Poems. London: Smith, Elder, and Co., 1846 [1848]. First edition, first printing, second issue. In the first state binding with blindstamped harp. Octavo. iv, 165, [1, colophon], [1, advertisement], [1, blank], [16, as catalog] pp.

Smith 1. Wise 2. Carter, Binding Variants, p. 94.
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Kaplan Boxing Archive: From Contender To Champ

Poster For An Exhibit of Materials From The Hank Kaplan Boxing Archive.

(All Images Courtesy Of Hank Kaplan Boxing Archive At Brooklyn College.)

The rags to riches story behind Brooklyn College's Hank Kaplan Boxing Archive just got a little richer: on April 16, 2010 the collection's chief archivist, Professor Anthony Cucchiara, became the winner of a $315,000 endowment from the National Endowment of the Humanities (NEH) to organize the largest and most extensive boxing collection in the world. "This two-year grant will allow us to process and preserve this invaluable collection that spans two centuries of boxing history," says Prof. Cucchiara.

Finding the funds to organize, catalog, and digitize the 2,600 books, 500,000 photographs and negatives, 1,200 posters, reams of clipping files, scrapbooks, documents, letters, and memorabilia that make up the Kaplan collection was a daunting task. A $50,000 seed grant from Barry Feirstein, Chair of the Brooklyn College Foundation, allowed Prof. Cucchiara and his team, Assistant Archivist Marianne LaBatto and Conservator Slava Polischuk, to begin an inventory of the over 2,000 cartons of material. But the goal was to make the entire collection available to the public, in accordance with the donor's wishes.

A Rare Poster For A Fight That Never Took Place. The Bout Was Rescheduled When Then Cassius Clay, Later Muhammad Ali, Became Ill.

Fortunately, the Brooklyn College academic charged with the task has more than a professional interest in this treasure trove of boxing memorabilia. Anthony Cucchiara works out every Tuesday, Thursday and Saturday at Gleason’s Gym in Brooklyn with Hector Rocca, who trained the recently-deceased fighter Arturo "Thunder" Gatti, as well as "Million Dollar Baby" star Hilary Swank. It was the friendship between the pugilist professor and donor Hank Kaplan, an authority on boxing nicknamed "the sweet scientist," "the human encyclopedia," and "the Lord of the Ring," that resulted in the $3 million collection coming to Brooklyn College.

Hank Kaplan's life story sounds like something straight out of the Dead End Kids. Kaplan was born in Brooklyn, New York in 1919, the son of Jewish immigrants from Lithuania. His father died when Hank was only nine, leaving his seamstress mother to raise four children alone. At times the family was so strapped for cash the children were temporarily placed in orphanages. His interest in boxing began when he suffered a bloody nose in a boyhood fistfight at a charity summer camp for hard luck city kids in upstate New York. He fought as an amateur middleweight, and later turned pro, winning his first and only bout. But this was in the early 1940's, and World War II ended his ring career. Kaplan joined the U.S. Coast Guard upon learning that its Director of Physical Training was former heavyweight champ Jack Dempsey.

Hank Kaplan At His Fighting Weight In The 1940's.

During the War, Kaplan was trained in the disinfection of contaminated ships, and after attending the University of Miami on the G.I. Bill, he began a career with the Centers For Disease Control (CDC). But his passion for prizefighting never waned. He retired at age fifty-five, and began a second career with his first love. In the 1950s and 1960s, he was a publicist for the brothers Chris and Angelo Dundee, who molded the careers of Muhammad Ali and other champions, and he occasionally promoted fights on his own. He served as a public relations consultant to top fighters, founded the Wide World of Boxing Digest, and wrote dozens of articles on the sport for such publications as Boxing World, The Ring, the London Times, and Der Stern. He served as a boxing consultant to Sports Illustrated for 24 years, and later worked for ESPN, HBO and Showtime. Over time Kaplan became known as a scholarly, reliable, and eloquent source of information on anything and everything related to the fight game.

Throughout his life Kaplan collected memorabilia related to the sweet science. Much of his collection was given to him by trainers and fighters he befriended. He knew every boxing champion of his day, including Jack Dempsey, Joe Louis, Rocky Marciano, Henry Armstrong, Jake LaMotta, Sugar Ray Robinson and Sugar Ray Leonard. He met an eighteen year old kid named Cassius Clay at the Fifth Street Gym in Miami in 1960. By the time Clay became "The Greatest," Kaplan and Heavyweight Champion of the World Muhammad Ali were fast friends.

Kaplan's Comprehensive Collection Includes Products Endorsed By "The Greatest."

But Kaplan's one-man history of boxing isn't just about the champs. He kept detailed records on virtually every professional boxer and trainer in history, and on judges, referees, and announcers, too. Kaplan kept vast files on what he called "fistic arcana," such as mainstream and unorthodox training methods, boxing in the movies, animals in boxing, bare-knuckle fighting, and Jewish and Italian boxers who adopted Irish names. Despite his association with big-name boxers, Kaplan was devoted to the memory of each and every fighter. His files on now-forgotten fighters like Joe Grim, a palooka whose professional record of 6-91-9 was the worst of all time, were as important to him as the rest: "Even when I was 16 or 17, I said there's got to be some way to remember them," Mr. Kaplan told the South Florida Sun-Sentinel in 1995. "If someone were to ask me why I keep the archives, I guess that's what I'd say: Someone has to be charged with remembering them."

By the beginning of 1990, Kaplan's collection filled two rooms in his Kendall, Florida home, and an entire two-car garage. Then in 1992, Hurricane Andrew ripped the roof from the garage, putting much of the collection at risk. Kaplan was able to save nearly everything he had collected, but he began to think seriously about what would happen to his vast historical archive after his death. David Smith, a supervising librarian at the New York Public Library, learned about the Kaplan archive from the writer David Margolick, who was researching his book, Beyond Glory: Joe Louis vs. Max Schmeling, and a World on the Brink. Then Smith read a 2005 article in The New York Times that mentioned Professor Tony Cucchiara's devotion to boxing. Smith arranged the introductions that led to Hank Kaplan's archive finding a new home at a college in his boyhood home town.

A Portrait Of Hank Kaplan By Artist Bob Carson.

Hank Kaplan became ill in late 2007, and Prof Cucchiara received a call from his daughter, Barbara Kaplan-Haar, who informed him that her father intended to leave the entire collection to Brooklyn College. Mr. Kaplan died two weeks after that call. "I think Hank liked the idea that the collection would be coming to Brooklyn," Professor Cucchiara said. "And it could be that he thought, since I'm both an academician and a boxer, that I would not let him down." "Some people would want to turn up their noses at a boxing collection," he added. "But the story of America is in this archive. Boxing is more than a sport. It's a lens through which to look at American cultural history." The professor and the donor share an undying admiration for the sweet science, "None of this is for my own glory," Kaplan said of his collection. "I have no dreams of great rewards. My love of boxing comes first."

Posted by Nancy Mattoon

The Biggest Jew In Chicago Part 3

According to its press book, a movie was loosely based upon Terry Druggan, his partner Frankie Lake, and their activities.



William Wellman’s The Public Enemy (1931), starred James Cagney as Tommy Powers/Terry Druggan and featured Edward Woods as Matt Doyle/Frankie Lake. The 1923 tragi-comic death of Sam “Nails” Morton was depicted in the movie: An avid horseman, Nails (in the film, “Nails Nathan”) was riding in Lincoln Park one morning, a stirrup broke, the horse reared, Nails was thrown, the horse kicked him in the head and killed him. So upset and grief stricken were his Irish boon companions and partners that a hit squad was sent to the stable. They aerated the horse’s head. In the film, Cagney/Tommy/Terry is the equine’s assassin. In reality, it was Louis “Two-Gun”Alterie, an ex-gunsel for Druggan and member of O’Banion’s gang, along with a couple of other equestrian executioners in the employ of O’Banion.

In A Little Piece of History: The Village of Kildeer [a small community northwest of Chicago], Clayton W. Brown recounts that:

During Prohibition a gentleman named Terrance Druggan purchased about 215 acres of land on both sides of Long Grove in what is now Kildeer's Farmington Subdivision. Mr. Druggan had a nickname, ‘Terrible Terry.’ because he was a Chicago gangster, head of the Druggan-Lake Gang (or Valley Gang) prominent in the 1920's. His partner was Frankie Lake, an ex-Chicago fireman...They were both trigger-happy bootleggers who controlled a territory on Chicago's west side, between Cicero and Chicago's Little Italy, as lieutenants of Al Capone [they were not lieutenants of Capone; their gang was part of Capone’s syndicate]. Both Druggan and Lake, as young teenagers, joined the Valley Gang then controlled by...Paddy ‘The Bear’ Ryan and Heinrich ‘Big Heinie’ Miller. When they reached maturity they took it over.

Druggan was a dwarf-like character who lisped when excited, especially when shooting down an opponent or hijacking a liquor truck. Both men wore expensive fedoras, tailor-made suits and horned-rimmed glasses, which gave them the appearance of mild-mannered businessmen. Druggan was very religious, a devout Catholic, in spite of the his criminal activities. Druggan and Lake both became millionaires during Prohibition and rode in limousines driven by chauffeurs. They owned a private railroad car, but used it only once after it's windows were shot out by rival gangsters.

Most of their fortune came from Joseph Stenson who gave them 50 percent of five large breweries so they would stop hijacking his shipments and he could continue to operate. By 1925, Capone was taking more than 40 percent of the profits from their breweries, but provided Druggan and Lake with an army of gunmen to protect their territory. Both were imprisoned once for operating illegal breweries. Terry Druggan built a stucco-sided house on Long Grove Road, near Middleton…There formerly was a flagpole in front that could be seen from Rand Road. He had a handy man who's job it was to raise and lower the flag. If the flag was at the top of the pole it was O.K. for Druggan to come home, at half-mast it meant someone was there looking for him and he should keep going. Whenever Druggan heard a noise outside the house he would look out the windows carrying a machine gun. Having once been shot through one of the windows caused him to move into a rear bedroom. A subsequent owner of the house claimed there were bullet holes in the gutters and siding.

Of Druggan and Lake, Herbert Asbury, in Gangs of Chicago, wrote:

In 1924, for refusing to answer questions put to them by Judge James Wilkerson of the United States District Court, Druggan and Lake were sentenced to a year's imprisonment for contempt of court. Several months later a newspaper reporter called at the county jail to see Druggan, but when he asked for the gangster he was told: ’Mr. Druggan is not in today.’

’Then I'll talk to Frankie Lake,’ said the reporter.

‘Mr. Lake also had an appointment downtown,’ the jailer said. 'They will be back after dinner.’

The dazed newspaper man returned to his office, and an investigation disclosed that both Druggan and Lake, in return for twenty thousand dollars in bribes, as they testified later, had been given extraordinary privileges. Supposedly incarcerated and treated the same as other prisoners, they had actually spent much more time in Loop restaurants and in their own luxurious apartments than in jail; they had been permitted to come and go as they pleased, and the death cell of the jail had been turned into a private office where they received their gangsters and issued their orders.

James Cagney as Terry Druggan in The Public Enemy.

Poppy and Druggan loved cards, and Terry would occasionally come over to the house to play a few hands of poker or pinochle with him, continuing to do so, presumably, during his extra-joint jaunts into town.

The legal and illegal trade in liquor co-existed on an incestuous, go-along to get-along basis in an unspoken truce; there were family members on both sides. After Capone organized the various gangs and ended, for the most part, the constant hijacking of each others' trucks, some rogue mobsters would try to hijack legitimate whiskey but if they knew you and liked you they’d leave your stuff alone. Particularly if your name was Gertz. Poppy, because of his size, reputation, where he was brought up and the people he knew, was given wide- very wide - berth. Sometimes, though, things got a bit confusing on the streets.

One night, Poppy got a call and immediately phoned Great-Grandpa Bernstein: One of National Brokerage’s trucks was being followed by mob guys and Poppy needed help; Abe Bernstein né Degrafsky was no shrinking violet. Yet another Livak from Vilna, and, like Aaron Gershowetz, a horse trader but with bear in his heart and a hard-flint disposition borne of a childhood evading capture by Cossaks for 20-year enslavement into the Russian army, he and his were not be trifled with. Armed and dangerous, the two of them chased off the would-be hijackers.

Next morning, Poppy went for his regular haircut at the College Inn Barbershop in the Sherman House, the big hotel across from City Hall where all of Chicago’s politicians, gangsters and sports crowd congregated, and ran into Terry in the lobby. Druggan comically related the previous night’s incident, excitingly commenting upon the crazy Indian pumping shot at him from the truck ahead and the wild men spraying him from behind. (Both Poppy and Uncle Sol, because of their broad, thick, high cheekbones, somewhat resembled Native-American chieftains). Poppy didn’t know Druggan was the guy following his truck, and Druggan didn’t know it was Poppy’s truck or that Crazy Sollie was literally riding shotgun in it. Poppy set him straight. “Gee, Eddie, I had no idea.” No harm, no foul.

There were a couple of occasions when Poppy and Uncle Sol were pulled over by other Capone associates while delivering a shipment.

Bad idea followed by hard swallows and awkward salutations: “Uh. Hi, Eddie.” The other opens the back of the truck and is greeted by Sol with a shotgun. “Uh. Hi, Sollie.” End of incident.

Druggan was a good guy to know if you had a special problem. A few years before, Grandma was robbed on the street. When she told Poppy about it, he immediately knew what to do. He called Druggan, Terry got hold of guys who did it and retrieved Grandma’s jewelry. No word on the fate of the thieves.

Boxing was Poppy’s favorite sport. He spent a lot of time at Davey Miller’s gym getting to know the young guys who would later become well known fighters. He took my father to all the Friday night amateur fights that Miller ran at his gym. By the mid-Twenties, Miller had become the outstanding boxing referee in Illinois.

Come 1927 and Dempsey and Tunney are set to fight their rematch in Chicago. Davey was the appointed ref for the fight but Miller had a brother, Herschie, who was a member of Capone’s gang. Capone idolized Dempsey and Davey Miller was considered to be in Capone's pocket because of Herschie and Davey’s gambling operation. (Miller, a paragon of character and completely unintimidated by Alphonso, many years later admitted that Capone had approached him but that he had politely and firmly turned down Capone’s pre-fight bribe to make sure things went right. He didn’t report the Capone offer; having refused, it was of moot importance). Before the fight, Poppy took my father, seven years old, to Dempsey's training camp. It seemed that everyone in the fight crowd knew Big Ed; he was a star amongst them. Poppy and Grandma had ringside seats at Soldier Field at the then extravagant price of $40 each.

In an unusual example of backbone, at the last minute the Illinois boxing commission nixed Miller, Dave Barry was substituted as referee, and the result was infamous "long count." My father, listening to the fight on the radio at home, cried when Dempsey lost. Jack was Poppy’s friend and his as well.

Just a few weeks before that fight, Poppy went to see the Cubs play the Reds at Wrigley Field. As usual, he was in his box seat right behind the visiting team’s dugout. At the close of the ninth inning, a few men behind him gave Reds’ pitcher Pete Donohue the razz as he walked to the dugout. Donohue, assuming Poppy was the ringleader, “took him to task,” and spit-balled “Jew Bastard” at him.

Bad idea.

Poppy jumps out his seat, leaps over the railing onto the field and decks Donohue. The entire Reds team comes to Donohue’s rescue and a few others take the horizontal express before “hostilities” are officially ended by the erstwhile cop, Officer Hunt. Poppy is unscathed. A few of his upstanding and lowstanding friends in attendance then whip up the Jews in the crowd to Poppy’s defense as he’s taken away. Post-game anarchy ensues. Enter the Riot Squad. True to form, however, Poppy made a new friend. Though Donohue – his topography and ego seriously bruised - never stood up to the plate, Reds’ manager Jack Hendricks and Big Ed became buddies.

Contrary to the newspaper accounts, Poppy was taken to Summerdale Station and held uncharged and unbooked for a few hours. The police called Grandma at home and told her he would be home shortly. Grandma was relieved. Until receiving the call, she was supremely angry, assuming that Poppy was late for dinner because he was out playing cards. Starting a riot and getting arrested were the lesser of evils, as far as she was concerned; after all, he was defending Jewish honor.

Poppy also defended hers. One day, the two are strolling along State Street, Grandma walking ahead with a friend. On the corner, a wise-acre begins to wolf-whistle and catcall the ladies as they pass by.

Bad idea.

Said wise-acre was Harry, b. Hershel, Krakow, aka “Kingfish" or "King Levinsky,” a tall, husky, popular, somewhat buffoonish Jewish heavyweight contender with a crushing overhand right who fought Max Baer and defeated Dempsey, ending the ex-champ’s comeback. Kingfish was renowned for his colorful post-fight commentary - “I hitted him where it hoit da most. Da King ain’t no sucker, ya know,” he reportedly declared after his fight with Jimmy Slattery – and his unorthodox defense methods in the ring: An early conservationist, rather than waste valuable energy moving out of the way he blocked punches with his face.

Kingfish, aka King Levinsky.

Poppy laid him out cold on the sidewalk.

Levinsky’s post-fight commentary for this quick business is lost to history. But though his manager at the time was Davey and Herschie Miller’s brother, Al, there were no repercussions for Poppy. After all, Davey and Herschie were his friends, and Kingfish was seriously out of line; any man would have done the same. Suffice it to say, after Poppy hitted him where it hoit da most, King Levinsky became his friend: Da King wasn’t no sucker, y’know.

Later on, when there was a big fight in New York, the 20th Century Limited would run from Chicago and all the politicians, gangsters and sporting crowd would be on the train, including Poppy, so his circle of friends and acquaintances grew larger. He was the biggest, toughest Jew in Chicago and in the liquor business, a magnet for friendship and respect.

_________

Part [1]  [2]  [3] [4] [5] [6]

Ernest Hemingway: Down for the Count

by Stephen J. Gertz

 In 1922, Heavyweight Champion Jack Dempsey was the toast of Paris. He was feted and fawned over, the women obliging, the men in awe.

Champion for three years, he was used to celebrities wanting to put the gloves on and spend a fantasy few minutes sparring with him. A fighter who took all that occurred within the ring with extreme seriousness – it is not a playground1 - he nonetheless indulged many: he allowed silent film star Douglas Fairbanks to throw jabs and rights at him, knowing that Fairbanks’ smaller frame and lesser weight would not put much power behind his punches, if they connected at all. Singer Al Jolson put the gloves on with Dempsey and, being an aggressive fool, made the bad decision to get cute and throw a punch that had some stream in it. After he woke up, he was forever afterward proud of the scar on his chin, bearing it as a badge of honor; Dempsey had reflexively countered but, being a gentleman, was horrified and apologetic.

There were more than a few in Paris that year who stepped into the four corners with the Champ for a light dance around the squared circle. They were no threat.

There was one person in Paris that year whose desire to get in the ring with Dempsey would not be indulged. Ernest Hemingway was a threat. Not to Dempsey but to himself.

As Roger Kahn, in his biography of the champion, A Flame of Pure Fire, reported Dempsey’s side of the story:

“’There were a lot of Americans in Paris and I sparred with a couple, just to be obliging,’ Dempsey said. ‘But there was one fellow I wouldn’t mix it with. That was Ernest Hemingway. He was about twenty-five or so and in good shape, and I was getting so I could read people, or anyway men, pretty well. I had this sense that Hemingway, who really thought he could box, would come out of the corner like a madman. To stop him, I would have to hurt him badly, I didn’t want to do that to Hemingway. That’s why I never sparred with him.’”

Hemingway had delusions of competence. He often boasted to interviewers that he was “a good semi-professional boxer.” He was nowhere near so.

In 1948, Hemingway, then forty-nine, challenged Brooklyn Dodger relief pitcher Hugh Casey, a guest at Hemingway’s Havana retreat, to get in the ring with him. In his living room. Casey, without any boxing experience whatsoever, dropped Hemingway, who crashed into a glass-topped table on his way to horizontal.

On another occasion, related by George Plimpton in his story, Ring Around the Writers, Hemingway insisted that his friend, former Heavyweight Champion, Gene Tunney, get in the ring with him. Hemingway presumed too much but was saved by Tunney’s sportsmanship and control: Countering a Hemingway punch thrown with a little too much seriousness given the situation, Tunney ripped a straight right but pulled it just an angstrom unit away from Hemingway’s face, the clear message being, “you were that close to having your head handed to you and it is only because I am merciful that you are not currently residing on Dream Street.”

“In those days,” novelist Morley Callaghan recalled in That Summer in Paris, his memoir of a season in 1920s France and his friendship with Hemingway, “He liked telling a man how to do things.” The kid’s in his mid-twenties and he’s telling other man-children how to do things. Hemingway loved boxing, hung around gyms, and tried to box with someone, anyone at every opportunity. But the reality, according to Callaghan, who had done some boxing himself, was that, “we were two amateur boxers. The difference between us was that he had given time and imagination to boxing; I had actually worked out a lot with good fast college boxers.” In other words, Hemingway was lost in the romance of a sport that has no romance to those seriously pursuing it; the romance strictly belongs to spectators.

“My writing is nothing,” he once averred to writer Josephine Herbst in all sincerity, “my boxing is everything.” Good thing he didn’t quit his day job.

Callaghan and Hemingway boxed together quite a bit that summer. Callaghan may have been being generous when he called Hemingway an amateur. He remembers that his wife would complain that he always came home with bruised shoulders after sparring with Hemingway. Callaghan would laugh in response, explaining that the shoulder welts and bruises meant that Ernest had always missed his jaw, nose, or mouth. Against someone who had any sense of what they were doing, Hemingway, apparently, couldn’t hit the broad side of a barn or fight his way out of a wet paper bag.

Once, the two sparred, and, as Callaghan recalled, “he did something that astonished me.” Continually being tagged by Callaghan’s left jab and unable to counter or beat him to the punch with his right, Hemingway was taking a slow, steady shellacking, his mouth bleeding, his lips split open. “It must have been exasperating for him.” Particularly as Callaghan was five inches shorter and lighter than Ernie The Oak Park Pretender Hemingway.

“Courage is grace under pressure,” Hemingway famously declared. Under intense pressure to keep his oversized ego from circling the drain and self-image flushing down the toilet, Hemingway then “loudly sucked in all the blood. He waited, watching me, and took another punch on the mouth. Then…he stiffened. Suddenly he spat at me; he spat a mouthful of blood; he spat in my face.”

“That’s what bullfighters do when they’re injured. It’s a way of showing contempt,” Hemingway offered as lame excuse for this cross-culturally acknowledged insult, an affront so profound it is an invitation to violent response. So much for sportsmanship.

I, admittedly, know little about bullfighting but my guess is that when a bull is frantically twirling a toreador on one of his horns like a plate-spinning Vaudeville act, the only reason blood is running out of the bullfighter’s mouth is because he’s been gored in the abdomen, and the only contempt he may be feeling is for himself, for his stupidity while he, panicked and afraid, ruefully contemplates death.

Suffice it to say, had Hemingway gotten into the ring with Dempsey and pulled that nonsense, Papa would have wound up a paragraph in Le Monde’s obit section, his novels never written. Too bad it didn’t happen. The Western world’s men would have been spared a lot of grief by the twentieth century’s greatest master of macho baloney. “A little less machismo, a little more pianissimo,” as Booktryst correspondent, Nancy Mattoon, dryly notes of Hemingway.

Later, Hemingway and Callaghan sparred again. F. Scott Fitzgerald, in awe of Ernest, was present as timekeeper, a chore he knew nothing about. Hemingway was, yet again, on the receiving end of Callaghan’s left jab, bleeding, and not looking like the god that Fitzgerald (and Hemingway) imagined him to be. During the one-minute break, Hemingway noticed that Fitzgerald was stricken. When F. Scott rang the bell for the next round, Hemingway came out like a bull, throwing wild, wide punches. Then “Ernest, wiping the blood from his mouth with his glove, and probably made careless with exasperation and embarrassment from having Scott there, came leaping at me. Stepping in, I beat him to the punch…I caught him on the jaw; spinning around he went down, sprawled out on his back,” Callaghan reported.

Fitzgerald was aghast; he’d mistakenly let the round go an extra minute. He admitted this to Hemingway, who promptly laid into him, unmercifully accusing Fitzgerald of deliberately allowing the round to go overtime so that that he could “see me getting the shit knocked out of me.” Grace under pressure…

Hemingway’s embarrassment and resentment would negatively affect his friendships with Callaghan and Fitzgerald. There is a name for someone who behaves so atrociously after honest defeat: sore loser.

Hemingway also fancied himself an amateur bullfighter. As there is no record of his blood being spilled, it is reasonable to conclude that the bulls he was fighting were not wearing boxing gloves.

It may be that as he aged and all the psychic armor he’d been donning piece by piece in youth like multi-layered underwear against the cold began to fall off in tatters, he was left naked and shivering. His body was breaking down, his robustness bust. He was no longer the a man he wished to be. So he knocked himself beyond next week into the next life. So much for grace under pressure, the only real grace being if feces don’t run down your pants leg during extreme duress, cool equipoise occurring only in novels, particularly those of you know who.

Hemingway was, by all accounts of those who truly knew him, a soft, sensitive and sentimental young man. He went to enormous lengths bordering on travesty to mask it. “It was amusing to remember the Hemingway who had first come to Montparnasse,” Callaghan wrote. “Ask anybody. Why had he been wearing those three heavy sweaters to make himself look husky and powerful? A ridiculous giveaway.” He was a victim of his own warped sense of virility, an insecure artist’s sense that what he is doing is perhaps feminine in nature, God help him, and rather than balance it, go overboard and, in the end, drown. Writer and publisher Robert McAlmon claimed that a “scandalous incident” transpired between him and Hemingway early in the future Nobelist’s career. McAlmon was a homosexual. Whether true or not, the mere rumor must have driven Hemingway to throw on a few more sweaters no matter how uncomfortable the fit.

Let us now officially deep-six the Hemingway fantasy of people growing “strong in the broken places.” That nonsense is strictly for bones. In the real world, the psychic wounds we bear remain weak at the break, they never heal, they never scar. They remain as hard scabs that when scratched or rubbed will bleed again, the blood-run slow or fast depending upon the how forceful the scratch or rough the rub. Or how we pick at them, ourselves. Time may heal all wounds but for most of us there isn’t enough of it. Hemingway was a deeply wounded man. No crime in that. The felony is in the fallacy of his writing.

Earnest Hemingway was an innovative stylist but not an honest writer. Rather than examine the uncomfortable realities of manhood and masculinity in his work, he evaded them, avoiding the inner exploration that would have been necessary to discover truth. In its stead he created a romanticized, wishful thinking vision of virility that plagued his and successive generations of men with an impossible standard that even he could not bear.

My Grandfather, a huge man in an era when few were that size and quite handy, once dropped heavyweight contender, Harry Krakow aka Kingfish Levinsky, with a single punch that laid him out cold on the street for wolf-whistling and cat-calling my grandmother. Poppy could have taken out Papa in a blink; he was the toughest man I’ve ever known and I’ve known more than my share. I did some amateur boxing when I was young, dumb and made of rubber. Compared to my grandfather, I’m a cream puff. But even I could have put Hemingway on the horizontal express.

If John Donne were alive today, I suspect he'd have the last word. "Never send to know for whom the bell tolls; it tolls for thee, Ernest, it tolls for thee…

… eight…nine… ten. OUT! “

___________

1. As Thomas Hauser, the best writer on boxing of our and, perhaps, any generation has noted with devastating acuity: “People play baseball, they play football, tennis, basketball, hockey, they play a lot of sports. Nobody plays boxing.”
____________


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